


Alden's Mittens

by hhertzof



Category: My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George, Sunny's Mittens - Robin Hansen
Genre: Boys can knit too, Down with toxic masculinity, Gen, Knitting, Mittens - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 04:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/pseuds/hhertzof
Summary: Why was Alden so dismissive of Sunny's mittens? Given all the other skills Sam Gribley learned, why didn't he learn to knit?





	Alden's Mittens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



> This completely ignores the sequels to My Side of the Mountain because they didn't fit with where this was going. This is what happens when one rereads My Side of the Mountain and Sam's survivalist skills don't include knitting.

Sunny curled up on the sofa and turned on the TV, found her place in the pattern and started knitting. It was odd to have the tv all to herself in the afternoon, but ever since Alden had become friends with Sam Gribley, he spent most of his time outdoors or at Sam's. Once or twice she'd come home to find them both sprawled in front of the TV, but Sunny got the impression that Sam didn't feel like he'd missed much during the year he'd spent living in a tree.

She'd seen the tree, of course. Alice was her the way to becoming a friend and they'd gone over one day to watch the Gribley's house being built. Alden had been there, pounding away at nails as if he'd done it all his life. Sunny had pounded in a nail or two herself but hadn't seen the fascination. Maybe when the house was further along it would be more interesting. At least with knitting you could see the results right away.

* * *

Alden had become an expert in doing just enough work to deflect suspicion. He and Sam would wander over after school, spend about an hour working on the new house and then disappear into Sam's treehouse. It was still the coolest thing Alden had ever seen.

Sometimes they just talked but more often they worked on various projects, either for the treehouse or presents for their families. Their latest scheme had started a week before when Sunny had been over with Alice. It wasn't anything she'd said or done, just her being there handling a hammer just as easily as she handled her knitting needles. Somehow it had come out that in his year of living off the land, Sam had never attempted knitting even when deer hide was not the ideal medium to work in. "Even my little sister can knit mittens." Alden had retorted and from that one short sentence a challenge had been born.

Sam could sew, though Alden doubted his work would pass muster with Nana, but it had never even occurred to him to try knitting. He claimed it was the lack of materials and that knitted mittens or gloves wouldn't hold up to some of Sam's rougher tasks, but Alden had countered that Sunny's mittens were both strong and sturdy and that it would be a useful pastime during the long winter months.

Alden thought he remembered how Nana had taught Sunny, even if he'd never tried it himself. They'd debated the merits of asking Miss Turner for a book, but she knew both Sunny and Nana well and the boys were afraid she'd let something slip.

Sunny kept the wrapper from the skein of yarn she used for her first mittens pinned to the bulletin board in her room with her other treasures, so it hadn't been a problem for Alden to slip into her room one day while she was at Girl Scouts and take notes. Conveniently she'd left the pair of mittens she was knitting for Billie Jo's birthday on her desk, so he was able to get a good look at those too. He even took out a ruler and measured them before noticing that they had the diameter printed on the needles. Then he counted the number of stitches she'd made and the number of rows, noticing that one row looked different but deciding he could figure that out later.

* * *

Armed with his notes, he'd bravely gone to his Nana and asked her to take him to the yarn shop so that he could get Sunny something for her birthday. He'd felt guilty when she'd praised him for being a good brother, but also a little annoyed that Nana had never offered to teach him how to knit. All the more reason to try it without her.

The trip to the yarn shop had also gone more smoothly than he had dared to expect. Nana had run into a friend who was knitting a sweater and stopped to admire it, leaving Alden free to pick out a skein of brown yarn for Sam, dark green for himself of the exact same brand of wool that Sunny had used and two identical sets of knitting needles. He was both impressed and a little annoyed that he'd copied down more information than he'd needed. 

Casting a wary look at Nana, he added three skeins of a bright pink in a lighter weight which advertised a pattern for a hat and scarf he thought Sunny would like and after wincing at the cost a little, he added the needles which the pattern recommended. He figured he owed it to her. If Alden's theories were correct, she had taught him how to knit. And if not, he and Sam had agreed that they'd go to Sunny before they went to Nana.

* * *

The plan almost failed at the beginning. Not the buying part as Alden had his purchases safely tucked away in a bag with the shop's name before Nana had finished discussing the sweater with her friend. Alden had failed to realize that while he'd watched his sister knit, saying that silly rhyme over and over again so that it got in his head, he hadn't seen how she got the yarn on the needles to start.

It was Sam who figured out that if they made backwards loops onto the needles they could get the stitches to stay put. After that, Alden took charge and taught Sam the rhyme that Sunny had used. He tried to remember exactly how she'd held the needles and what she'd done with them as she'd said it. They had a few false starts and their first few rows looked decidedly wobbly. It took some practice to get the stitches to stay on the needles but their knitting slowly improved so that by the eighth row it looked almost as even as Sunny's. 

Now they needed to learn how to make that strange row and Alden hadn't had another chance to peek at either Sunny's mittens, which were put away for the summer, or the ones she was making for Billie Jo. No one in Sam's family knitted, which left Nana, Sunny, or getting a book from Miss Turner. Alden refused to go to Nana, and neither Sam nor Alden knew enough about the terminology to look it up in a book, so that left Sunny.

* * *

Alden waited until his parents were otherwise occupied before he knocked on Sunny's door, entering and carefully closing the door when she invited him in. He was relieved when she didn't tease him over his attempt, but instead showed him how to reverse the work and knit around in the opposite direction.

"But when you have to do the thumbs, you might want to ask Nana. I'm not very good at them yet," Sunny said with a sheepish grin.

"No!" Alden snapped. The word came out louder than he'd intended. "No," he repeated. "She never offered to teach me to knit and I'm not going to go running to her now. I'd rather have thumbs that didn't look quite right."

Sunny stared at him. Nana had jumped at the chance to teach her and then to suggest that she knit her own mittens. "That's silly," then, realizing how that sounded, she quickly added, "Why wouldn't boys want to know how to knit? It's just as useful as knowing how to hammer a nail."

"Exactly. Which is why Sam and I decided we should know how to do it." Alden relaxed again. Sunny understood.

"I was thinking," Sunny said. "Nana always makes stuff for other people, but no one ever makes her things. After I finish the mittens for Billie Jo, I'm going to make her something. I'm not sure what yet. Maybe you could too."

Alden thought about this for a moment as he turned his knitting back around. "It would have to be something very simple. I'm nowhere near as good a knitter as you are yet. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad to ask her to teach me, if I showed her how far I'd gotten on my own," then honesty made him add, "though I never would have got this far if you hadn't insisted on repeating that annoying rhyme until I could repeat it in my sleep."

Sunny stuck out her tongue at him. "Now go away, I have math homework to finish. And you probably shouldn't go much further before showing that to Sam."

Alden grinned at her. "Thanks Sunny, you're not half bad for a little sister." He slipped out the door a little less cautiously than he'd entered. He knew what to do next on the mitten and maybe, just maybe he could prove to Nana that boys could knit too.


End file.
